SODOMY IS DEAD! LONG LIVE SODOMY!

It seems like the news on the home front has been all queer, all the time since the Supremes killed the nation’s sodomy laws. From gay sex to gay ministers, it’s a big, big summer for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender rights. But straight folks should not feel left out of the festivities. I know, for years “sodomite” and “homosexual” have been considered practically synonyms. Most people probably don’t even know that there have been plenty of illegal heterosexual sodomites all along, and they’re not even all butt pirates. You might be one, in fact! Well, not any more the overturn of the Texas sodomy law shot all sodomy laws down, but chances are if you’ve traveled this great land, you’ve entered a state that made it illegal for anyone to have anal sex… or sometimes even criminalized oral sex. The legal definition of sodomy has been almost as loosey-goosey as that of “bawdy house,” another fun thing we’re not supposed to like.

So you see, here’s a classic example of a gay rights issue that really is much broader than it seems. Queer rights activists have been emphasizing for years the links between queers and everybody else. But for that to have any effect, heteros have to be reminded that they, too, can’t always have sex the way they want. That’s a dilemma for the gay rights agitators who tend to see hetero lives as non-problematic after all, you straight people have all the rights!

Well, not always. There are tons of ways in which heterosexual peoples’ erotic and relationship freedom are affected by laws and anti-sex cultural mores in the US. Many perhaps most straight people don’t truly walk the straight and narrow. Certainly you don’t have to be queer to embrace a problematized (and sometimes illegal) sexual lifestyle: just ask the sex workers and their clients, the straight SM aficionados, the polyamorists and polygamists. Plenty of people in their country don’t feel they can go home for Thanksgiving and talk to their moms about their real lives.

NOT EVERYONE IS PRO-GAY…

Anyway, even if you’re gay and you can talk to your mom, others can’t. And what if Justice Scalia was your dad? He sure sounded like a cookie-cutter homophobe in his Supreme Court dissent. Even sophisticated Donald Trump is lately no friend to queers; he’s got a big lawsuit filed against the promoters of the upcoming Miss Gay Universe pageant. No, that’s not like a Howard Stern Cutest Lesbian competition (although I’d pay good money for a seat at that court case!) Miss Gay Universe is a drag competition. The Donald thinks people will confuse it with the Miss Universe pageant, which he owns.

That kind of explains a lot about Donald, doesn’t it? Is that where he gets his girlfriends? No wonder he’s nervous about people confusing the two what if a really skillful drag queen slips in and turns his life upside down?

The drag queens at the helm of Miss Gay Universe are pretty scornful about Trump’s insistence that folks won’t be able to tell the two events apart. Organizer Ben Kuhns, whose drag name is Lauren Fox, said: "We'll be the ones with bigger hair, bigger boobs and three-times-bigger shoes." Yep, that about covers the difference, doesn’t it? Oh, and most of them will have penises, which you just might notice during the swimsuit competition. It’s damned difficult to keep a dick tucked into a thong but if anyone could do it, it’d be these big big girls.

GAY MARRIAGE IN THE CROSSHAIRS

And then there’s George W., who as usual is trying to play both ends against the middle: Now he wants to throw his administration’s weight into the struggle against gay marriage. This is hardly a new tactic on the part of the Right, but it’s certainly gained intensity since the Supremes did their thing. Now all the straight people with bad marriages can blame homosexuals for sullying the institution with their very presence and it’s a crisis! Bush has to do something!

While this tempest in a teapot boils, the eminently sensible Canadians have just made gay marriage a much more accessible goal north of the border. I love the Canadians, and this act makes me love them all the more. Sure, there are some folks there who don’t think gay marriage is the right thing to do, but everyone else is sensible, and there are more of them. Or perhaps they saw US yahoos acting out and decided that anything American idiots are against, they’ll be in favor of.

After all, the anti-gay marriage people are the same folks who fulminate about homosexual promiscuity. They want it both ways so vociferously, they’d make great bisexuals if they’d just settle down and get sex-positive. While this is going on, moderates are beginning to get on the bandwagon specifically because they think marriage will spawn a sober and fidelitious lifestyle among queers, completely ignoring the evidence that damn few heterosexuals seem to act that way after their trip down the aisle.

Oh, it’s deep. Do you want to cast your own vote? CNN is polling America to ask whether marriage should be restricted to one man and one woman (to which I say, hey, sometimes two people aren’t enough to maintain a modern household). Vote online at http://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/30/bush.gay.marriage/index.html.

ONE OF EACH! IT’S SO 20TH CENTURY!

So do I have a position on this question of gay marriage? Why, yes I’m glad you asked! But it might surprise you. Though I voted no on Bush’s hetero-only marriage poll, I’m actually not a big fan of gay marriage.

But here’s a big caveat: I don’t think much of heterosexual marriage, either.

So far I’ve avoided both kinds, whether or not I’ve had someone in my life whom I consider a life partner as I have, now, for fourteen years. Although a Texas hotel clerk dubbed us common-law spouses, we’ve never walked down an aisle or jumped a broom, either, for that matter.

Love and partnership, whether it’s straight or gay (or something else), monogamous or wildly poly, is divine it’s something to celebrate, nurture, and respect. But marriage is fundamentally two things: It’s a religious rite, and it’s a business contract. Many gays and lesbians object to a secular, state-focused version of legal coupling, as is being attempted in places that allow civic unions or domestic partnership arrangements. They’re asking for the whole cake, but it’s a cake many married people have had real problems with from its sexist aspects to its economics. And need I point out that marriage is one of the two big elements that define “good sex” as opposed to “bad sex” in our culture? Sodomy aside, there are still states where it’s illegal to fuck unless you’re married. Instead of adding gays and lesbians to the ranks of married couples there, I’d like to see those laws off the books NOW.
And let’s not forget the way people in our culture especially women are brainwashed to believe that marriage is a requirement for maturity and happiness. Talk to some middle-aged divorcees about happiness sometime especially ones who’ve lost their shirts thanks to the assumptions built into divorce law.

So in my world, a vote for gay marriage is a vote for gay divorce proving that, as queer activists have been trying to say for years now, “We’re just like everybody else.” That’s not my goal, so marriage will always be a low priority on my activist agenda. Now that sodomy’s dead, there are still loads of anti-sex laws on the books. Hey, I can’t marry my vibrator, either; I still can’t even own six dildos in Texas; and as long as there are whores in jail, none of us are free to do with our bodies what we see fit. Let’s attack anti-sex laws before we lose our focus reaching for romantic dreams. And if you must have a wedding cake, just go bake one. After you’ve washed the plates, get back to work on those sex-negative laws.